CHICAGO TRIBUNE, Monday, May 10, 1999

 

WASHINGTON-As the bombs, smart and dumb, fall ceaselessly on Serbia,
Montenegrins and sometimes Albanians, on bridges, waterworks, electric
generation plants and factories, and on trains, trucks and homes, the
remorseless crusade for “humanitarianism” presses forward to the
applause of journalistic and academic shills. To paraphrase the Roman
historian Tacitus, we are busy creating a desert, which we can then call
peace.

For the United States, alias “NATO,” the planning and launching of this
war by the president heightens the abuse and undermining of warmaking
authority under the Constitution. (It seems to be accepted that the
president can order his personal army to attack any country he pleases).

The bombing war also violates and shreds the basic provisions of the
United Nations Charter and other conventions and treaties; the attack on
Yugoslavia constitutes the most brazen international aggression since
the Nazis attacked Poland to prevent “Polish atrocities” against
Germans. The United States has discarded pretensions to international
legality and decency, and embarked on a course of raw imperialism run
amok.

Our alleged concern with human rights borders on the ludicrous. We
dropped twice as many bombs on Vietnam as all the countries involved in
World War II dropped on each other. We killed hundreds of thousands of
civilians in the course of that war. Very recently, in Central America,
we sponsored, trained and endorsed the local armies – Guatemalan,
Salvadoran, and Nicaraguan Contras – in the killing of at least 200,000
people.

We encouraged the Pinochet coup in Chile with the resulting killing of
another few thousand or so people, including the democratically elected
president.

We saw nothing wrong with the Croat slaughter and expulsion
of 200,000 Serbs from the Krajina area.

We have taken very little stand on the monumental slaughters of hundreds
of thousands, if not millions,of people in Africa.

We have restrained the Iraqis from attacking Kurds but see nothing amiss in
Turks attacking Kurds.

We cannot even agree to abandon the use of land mines.

In reality when we, the self-anointed rulers of the planet, issue an
ultimatum to another country, it is “surrender or die.” To maintain our
“credibility,” we must crush any semblance of resistance to our dictates
to that country.

Walter J. Rockler
Former prosecutor
Nuremberg War Crimes Trials